THE HAGUE (AFP) – A UN court yesterday denied Bosnian-Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic leave to appeal its decision to appoint a lawyer to defend him and delay his trial to March 1. Allowing Karadzic to appeal “would hinder, rather than materially advance, the proceedings,” judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said in a decision made public in The Hague. Karadzic, 64, boycotted the first three days of his trial that opened on October 26, demanding more time to prepare his defense, which he is conducting himself. That forced the adjournment of the trial, and led the judges to rule on November 5 that a lawyer be assigned to Karadzic to take over if he continues his boycott. They ruled that the trial resume on March 1, to give the lawyer enough time to prepare. Karadzic sought to appeal that decision, insisting that he wanted to select the lawyer himself from a list to be provided by the court, and arguing that the resumption date was “picked out of thin air.” He had wanted even more time.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s state court yesterday sentenced two top officials of the national soccer federation (NFSBiH) to five years in prison over tax evasion and abuse of office between 2001 and 2006. NFSBiH Secretary General Munib Usanovic and Finance and Marketing Secretary Miodrag Kures were found guilty of evading taxes on turnover of products and services, as well as for illegal misappropriation of NFSBiH funds. They were also banned from holding any senior position or office for five years after their sentences expire. “The two evaded a total of 306,477 Bosnian marka [$235,751] in taxes and abused office by misappropriating $253,932 without a valid reason and proper documentation and thus obtaining personal gain,” the court said in a statement. It ordered Usanovic and Kures to repay the funds. “Never in my life have I misappropriated a single dime or evaded a dime in taxes,” Usanovic told reporters after the verdict. He said he would appeal the sentence. The public image of NFSBiH had been hurt by allegations of involvement in illegal activities and corruption.

BELGRADE (AP) – Serbia has opened its biggest military base in a tense area near the boundary with Kosovo, amid protests by local ethnic Albanian leaders. Officials say the base will help to secure peace and stability in the region which was the scene of an ethnic Albanian rebellion in 2000-01. Some 1,000 troops will be based there. President Boris Tadic said during the opening ceremony yesterday that the facility also will help to boost the fight against rampant organized crime. Local ethnic Albanian leaders say stepping up military presence in the ethnically mixed south of Serbia amounts to “militarization” and “occupation.”

The Turkish city of Izmir has asked Paris’s Louvre museum to return two statues of Greek gods Zeus and Apollo, a newspaper reported yesterday. In a letter to the management of the French museum, the mayor of the port city, Aziz Kocaoglu, demanded the return of the marble figures, newspaper Hurriyet said. Now displayed in the Louvre, they were discovered toward the end of the 17th century in the Izmir region, on the Aegean Sea, which is the site of the ancient city of Smyrna. They were taken to France and presented to King Louis XIV. The mayor of Izmir is asking for the statues to be returned to form part of a museum of Aegean civilization that the city plans to establish and has requested “long-term cooperation” from the Louvre. The statue of Zeus measures 2.34 meters (7.68 feet) high and the Apollo statue is 2.16 meters (7.1 feet), the paper said. (AFP)

The grandson and namesake of late Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito has been elected as leader of Serbia’s New Communist Party, Serbian news media reported late on Sunday. Josip Broz was chosen at the party’s inaugural congress in Novi Sad, southern Serbia, Radio B92 said. His grandfather led the erstwhile Yugoslavia from the end of World War II until his death in May 1980 – a decade before the country descended into war as its constituent republics declared independence. “We are struggling for history to be respected,” the younger Tito said. “Our ideology is that of the European Union, but we are not going to accept at any price its acts of blackmail.” He predicted that 14 small communist groups would soon join his party. (AFP)